Allegheny County's child welfare department, once known for scandalous neglect of already abused and neglected children, has been cited as a role model by a major national child welfare organization.

At the Allegheny County Office of Children, Youth and Families, "strengthening families has been at the core of a wide-ranging set of improvements," said an essay accompanying the 2007 Kids Count Data Book from the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Marc Cherna, who was brought in to revamp the county agency in 1996, was elated.

"We were once a national disgrace and now we are a national role model. It was nice to get that validation, that we have made such strides," he said.

The Casey report praised Allegheny County for tripling its spending on prevention and intervention services, including a network of 31 neighborhood support centers for families.

"Families needing help are linked to community-based agencies that provide intensive, in-home services tailored to each family's unique needs," the report said.

The entire community of Allegheny County deserves credit for improvements that spanned more than a decade and several administrations, Mr. Cherna said. He cited former Family Court Judge Max Baer (now a state Supreme Court justice) for instigating reform and County Chief Executive Dan Onorato for keeping families a priority.

"We went to the community and asked for assistance, and everyone came forward," Mr. Cherna said. Foundations gave money, and community and faith-based groups offered ideas and volunteers. The Reed Smith law firm has completed nearly 1,000 pro bono adoptions for children who might otherwise have languished in foster care. "This is how child protection works. It is a system. The government can't do this alone."

One bureaucratic maneuver that made a huge difference was folding four county social service departments into an integrated Department of Human Services, he said. The result was that if a young mother needed mental health services or housing, she didn't have to tackle a new bureaucracy to get it.

The praise for Allegheny County came in a report that showed slight improvements in overall well-being for children since 2000, despite worrisome family economics.

Nationally, there were significant improvements in rates of child deaths, teen births, high school dropouts and teens who are neither in school nor working. There were slight gains in infant and teen mortality.

But there were more low-birthweight babies, more children living in poverty and more children in both single-parent homes and homes where no parent has full-time, year-round employment.

Overall, Pennsylvania was slightly above the middle of the pack, 21st nationally. On the plus side, it was in the top 10 for fewest teen births and "idle teens" -- those without school or job -- ranked 10th and ninth. Child deaths decreased 5 percent.

But the number of Pennsylvania children living in poverty increased by 13 percent from 2000 to 2005. The report cited a 22 percent increase in state immigrant families, noting those children may need pre-kindergarten to sharpen English skills.

In most categories the state closely tracked the nation.

The biggest differences were in teen births, where 30 out of 1,000 Pennsylvania girls aged 15-19 gave birth in 2004, compared with 41 nationally. The other larger differences concerned income.

In 2005, 32 percent of the state's children lived in families where no parent had steady employment, compared with 34 percent nationally. And despite the state's losing ground in this category, 17 percent of Pennsylvania children lived in poverty while 19 percent did so nationwide.

Keeping families together is one of the Casey Foundation's goals, and the reason it praised Allegheny County. It singled out its funding of community support centers and the social workers it sends into homes. The money comes from savings achieved when foster care was reduced, Mr. Cherna said.